Tuesday, Dec 27, 2022 at 6:09 AM

From Psalm 38:

13 
I am like the deaf, who cannot hear,
    like the mute, who cannot speak;
14 
I have become like one who does not hear,
    whose mouth can offer no reply.
15 
Lord, I wait for you;
    you will answer, Lord my God.
16 
For I said, “Do not let them gloat
    or exalt themselves over me when my feet slip.”

17 
For I am about to fall,
    and my pain is ever with me.
18 
I confess my iniquity;
    I am troubled by my sin.

Reading and reflecting on this, i thought of the days and months before I got sober. This accurately describes me up to the moments before I first walked into the hallowed halls of Alcoholics Anonymous.

I couldn't feel the world. I was an empty shell of a human. Like an animal. Existing. Not living.
And although I didn't know it, I was crying out to something i didn't understand. My body was wrecked and shaking.
My mind was blank.
I felt like it was the end.

The words repentance and sin have negative connotations to us in the Modern world.

Sin is a Greek archery term. It means missing the Target.
Repentance is literally a "turning away"

When I got cleaned up and got dressed and went to a nearby meeting on December 19, 1999, It was a turning away from my old life. For I had wildly missed the target.
Reading this Psalm reminded me of how we when we get sober, repent (turn away) from our sins (missing the target).
We die to our old selves so we can be reborn into the person we were meant to be.
This religious language creeps some of us out.

But there's wisdom in there.
And we ignore that wisdom at our own peril.
We don't get "sent" to some firey place after we die.

For we were already dead. And living in that firey place.

When I got sober, it was my first step in walking out of that dark pit into the light.

To Freedom.